You can never go home

Sunset, Lompoc California.
A positive mental attitude brings with it faith, enthusiasm,
personal initiative, self-discipline, imagination and definiteness
of purpose, which attract people and beneficial opportunities.
A negative mental attitude carries with it fear, indecision, doubt,
procrastination, irritability and anger, which repel people and
drive away favorable opportunities.

Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject
to diminishing returns.
~David Brannon~





Lompoc has become well known for space launches, flower fields, and more recently, for it's many fine varietals of wine grown in the area.

The Lompoc area is also well known for it's natural beauty. It's a nice little town.
'The Small Town'
~Virginia (Ginny) Ellis~
The stillness and the quietness,
The boredom, the routine,
Anything and everything,
Either dies or is redeemed.


One can't escape the small town,
Even when one packs and leaves,
It is embedded in one's guts,
Like a lingering disease.


Ah, the small town - the sleepy small town,
A place to love and hate, you know,
People dream one day to leave it,
But it will never let them go.

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From our blog in May 2006:
You can never go home

~Oregon Hill~
~Cowboy Junkies~
The hoods are up on Pine Street,
rear ends lifted too
The great-grandsons of General Robert E. Lee
are making love with a little help from STP
Their women on the porches comparing alibis
Greasy eggs and bacon,
bumper stickers aimed to start a fight,
full gun racks, Confederate caps,
if you want some 'shine
well, you can always find some more,
but what I remember most is the colour of Suzy's door
And Suzy says she's up there
cutting carrots still
And Suzy says she's missing me
so I'm missing Oregon Hill
A river to the south
to wash away all sins
A college to the east of us
to learn where sin begins
A graveyard to the west of it all
which I may soon be lying in
'Cause to the north there is a prison
which I've come to call my home,
but some Monday morning no country song
will sing me home again
And Suzy says she's up there
cutting carrots still
And Suzy says she's missing me
so I'm missing Oregon Hill
Sunday morning, eight A.M.,
sirens fill the air
Sounds like someone made the river
Sounds like someone being born again
Me, I'm just lying here in Suzy's bed
Baptists celebratin' with praises to the Lord,
Rednecks doin' it with gin
Me and Suzy, we're celebratin'
the joy of sleeping in
because tomorrow I'll be home again
But Suzy says she'll wait there
cutting carrots by the window sill
And Suzy says, 'Always think of me
when you think of Oregon Hill'

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My town, Lompoc, the place where I (mostly) grew up has so many of the things mentioned in the song above, a prison, a college, a river, Pine street, Baptists and Rednecks. I thought of this as I walked around the old section of town yesterday while getting new tires put on the truck. The old town is full of little tiny houses tightly packed together, each with a small separate garage, all made of wood. Intricate and lush gardens are in the yards of most of these houses, and as I walked, the scent of sweet peas came to me. As I strolled past an old woman digging grasses out of the sidewalk cracks with an asparagus knife; a cigarette dangling from her mouth I thought of the old adage "you can never go back". And yes, although I like the walk, and the looks of the town, I much prefer our canyon with it's wilderness enfolding us.
I walked into the shop of some old friends I have not seen for a couple of decades, they were the glue that held our little 'Sheriff's Search and Rescue' team together. I was a member for a short time, and went with them on some rescues and recoveries. We talked of old times, walks in the woods, and her work with the 'Hug-a-Tree Foundation', that teaches children lost in the woods to hug a tree and sit and wait to be rescued.
The town is full of the rich tapestry of life; I walked past Florio's Carneceria, the Mexican meat market, decorated with a huge Mexican flag. I had an uncle Florian who died some years ago, he was a special uncle to me, big and strong, a woodsman who lived for a time in a log cabin he built himself in the woods. He'd worked for years in the Canadian woods, and had a build like Jack La Lane back in the old days.
I continued my walk past the VIVA House, the 'Volunteers for Inter-Valley Animals' has a 'Sylvester House', built to accommodate the cats that are abandoned. Many are the women who donate time and money to the cause of local animals. I think you can tell a lot about the values of a people by the way they treat the lowest of themselves, including their animals. In this and so many other respects I have to give Lompoc very high marks indeed.
As I was leaving VIVA a Sheriff drove by slowly, he spent a long time at the stop sign, watching me through his mirrors. To him I am a stranger in this town, regardless of how many times I have walked and driven these streets. He slowly drove away, while I walked on, content in the sights, smells and memories a little trip down 'Memory Lane' gave me.
God bless the small towns, and the people who live in them.
For an interesting perspective on the Minimal level Prison Camp in Lompoc visit Michael Santos's website, he is an inmate serving time at the camp (not to be confused with the Maximum Security Level Penitentiary located next door.